Academic Research

I study the role of new media technologies in social processes of institutional change.

My research is motivated by a desire to understand how technology is changing what it means to belong and the political consequences of new forms of sociality and social organization. 

My work centers on collective meaning-making and knowledge production with particular attention to the role myths, narratives, and affect play in socio-technical processes of institutional change. Current and past projects span substantive topics of nostalgia, misinformation, and the knowledge cultures of professions such as public relations and public policy. 

Drawing on a background that spans the social sciences (sociology, public policy), humanities (French literature), and professional practice (public relations), I combine cultural and historical analysis with digital methods to map/trace the evolution of social formations and how collective meanings emerge within them. 

Research Interests

  • Conner, V. (2023). Fever Dreams and the ‘Future of Nostalgia’ on TikTok. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2023i0.13408

  • “Live Free and Die: COVID-19 as a Vector for Moral Judgment and Risk-Taking.”

  • “Myths and Markets: The Emergence of the Policy Program at the University of Chicago”

  • “PR as an Epistemic Culture: The Role of the Public Relations Profession in Managing Misinformation and Challenges to Epistemic Authority ”

Projects

Conference papers

Nostalgia and Digital Media

Conner, VA. Digital Nostalgia, Remediated: Defining a Mediatized Emotion.

  • International Communication Association Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (June 21, 2024 - planned)

Conner, VA. Into the Depths: Re-articulating the Aesthetic Function in #nostalgiacore on TikTok.

  • Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference. (May 2024 - planned)

Conner, V. (2023). Fever Dreams and the ‘Future of Nostalgia’ on TikTok. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2023i0.13408

  • Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA (October 20, 2023 )

  • Backward Glances Biannual Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University Screen Cultures Program, Evanston, IL (September 2022)

Epistemic Communities and Cultures

Conner, VA. PR as an Epistemic Culture: The Role of the Public Relations Profession in Managing Misinformation and Challenges to Epistemic Authority.

  • International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 29, 2023)

Misinformation

Rojecki, A., Royal, P., and Conner, VA. Live Free and Die: COVID-19 as a Vector for Moral Judgment and Risk-Taking.

  • American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Montreal, QC (September 2022)

  • International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 26, 2023)

MA thesis

Organizational Emergence

Conner, V.A. “Myths and Markets: The Emergence of the Public Policy Program at the University of Chicago.” MA Thesis, University of Chicago (August 2020) https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11318

  • Committee: Andrew Abbott (Chair),

  • Cate Fugazzola (Preceptor)

Intellectual wayfindings

What prompted my journey from the boardroom to the classroom?

I like to say that I’ve always been at academic at heart. During my time working in the PR industry and higher education administration, I found myself wanting to dig deeper to understand the paradoxes of organizational life and what makes boundaries in the social world so messy. Mostly, I found myself questioning what I was really doing with words as J.L. Austin famously asked. Can a corporation really start a social movement? Where do frames come from? What does it mean to “construct” a narrative, and what role do professional cultures play in everyday ways of seeing and knowing the world?

My research interests, like everything in the social world, have been a process, shaped in interaction and in socially contextual ways. During my master’s studies in sociology at the University of Chicago, I cultivated a processual ontology to the study of social life that offers an heuristic for understanding my own intellectual journey and continues to influence how I think about the questions of communication, technology, culture, and society.

“Myths, however stable as they may appear, are dynamic. While they can – and are often used – within organizations to justify and legitimate paradoxical organizational behavior, they also have the power to cross social space and temporalities in a way that catalyzes subtle, yet profound, organizational change.”

— Viki Askounis Conner